Human milk provides all essential nutrients necessary for early life and is rich in nonnutrients, maternally derived (host) cells, and bacteria, but almost nothing is known about the interplay among these components. Research aim: The primary objective of this research was to characterize relationships among macronutrients, maternal cells, and bacteria in milk.
Milk samples were collected from 16 women and analyzed for protein, lipid, fatty acid, lactose, and human milk oligosaccharide concentrations. Concentrations of maternal cells were determined using microscopy, and somatic cell counts were enumerated. Microbial ecologies were characterized using culture-independent methods.
Absolute and relative concentrations of maternal cells were mostly consistent within each woman as were relative abundances of bacterial genera, and there were many apparent relationships between these factors. For instance, relative abundance of Serratia was negatively associated with somatic cell counts ( r = -.47, p < .0001) and neutrophil concentration ( r = -.38, p < .0006). Concentrations of several oligosaccharides were correlated with maternally derived cell types as well as somatic cell counts; for example, lacto-N-tetraose and lacto-N-neotetraose were inversely correlated with somatic cell counts ( r = -.64, p = .0082; r = -.52, p = .0387, respectively), and relative abundance of Staphylococcus was positively associated with total oligosaccharide concentration ( r = .69, p = .0034). Complex relationships between milk nutrients and bacterial community profile, maternal cells, and milk oligosaccharides were also apparent.
These data support the possibility that profiles of maternally derived cells, nutrient concentrations, and the microbiome of human milk might be interrelated.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 November 2019.
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#3,113,800
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Outputs from Journal of Human Lactation
#196
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#50,263
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Human Lactation
#8
of 21 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,832,041 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,359 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 21 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
